


The Morning Comes

by eleni459 (quietcuriosity)



Category: Dark Shadows (1966)
Genre: 1841PT, Gen, Parallel Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-07
Updated: 2007-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietcuriosity/pseuds/eleni459
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is a fate we all must accept. How it chooses to accept us is a different matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning Comes

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the 31_days community on livejournal. The prompt was: "the white lady".

At first, the glow wasn’t oppressive. Bramwell had only caught the faint sight of it from the distance. It seemed amorphous and strange, so he had no issue with writing it off as a byproduct of his failing eyesight. Soon, however, it began to move forward and the light it threw off began to fill his bedroom. In just a few moments, the room shifted from pitch-black night to noon.

Bramwell couldn’t leave even if he wanted. The nurse had taken his chair to the other side of room and he would have had to crawl on his hands and knees to reach it. For a man who had cleared 80 years, that was no easy task. And so Bramwell was forced to watch as a vaguely human form began to take shape inside the light. It can be only one thing, he thought: the Lady in White.

Bringer of sorrow and death, the Lady in White had haunted the Collins family for centuries. Everyone had been convinced that her appearance was tied to the curse of Brutus Collins and that its destruction would mean that she would no longer visit them on the eve of their deaths. But the death of Flora Collins made it abundantly clear that she was a specter with her own bone to pick with the family. With each passing family member, the Lady was sighted by at least three others. Now, Bramwell was the last of his generation. It was, he realized, his time.

He remembered hearing other family members beg her for reprieve. Their responses always filled him with a sort of dreadful pity. It was as if they had flubbed their last great moment for greatness. He knew that he could not go out of this world like a sniveling coward. Slowly, he began to sit up, attempting to arrange himself in the most dignified position that he was capable of. The light, regardless of his actions, moved forward. By the time he had finished arranging himself, the form had passed through his window and stood at the foot of his bed.

Bramwell, ready to meet his fate, looked up. He could barely believe his eyes. “Morgan?” he managed to stutter.

“Who were you expecting, cousin?” asked the specter.

“But…the lady…”

“The Lady in White? It seems that she’s not all we thought her to be. You see,” he explained as he leaned in towards his prey, “to those who have not been chosen to die, the light always looks like a woman in white. However, the person they hurt the most during their life always takes the person on death’s door to the afterlife.”

“So that’s why she didn’t stop coming after the curse ended.”

“Quite correct, cousin.” Morgan stared at him a moment before bolting away from the baseboard and heading back towards the window. “Well, come on!” he snarled. “I’ve been busy for the last few years. Once I’ve taken you to away, I get to rest. For all that you took from me, you at least owe me a peaceful return to the afterlife.”


End file.
